Five Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers members have been recognized with awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Academy's Scientific and Technical Awards honor the men, women, and companies whose discoveries and innovations have contributed in significant, outstanding, and lasting ways to motion pictures.
"Science and technology are fundamental to the filmmaking process, and we're so pleased to see SMPTE members recognized and honored by the Academy for their pioneering work in this area of the motion picture industry," said Barbara Lange, executive director at SMPTE.
SMPTE member Florian Kainz is part of the team that earned a Technical Achievement Award Academy Certificate for the architecture and development of the Zeno application framework. For more than a decade, Zeno's flexible and robust design has allowed the creation of a broad range of Academy Award-winning visual effects toolsets at Industrial Light & Magic.
SMPTE members Joshua Pines, David Reisner, and David Register together earned a Technical Achievement Award Academy Certificate for their role in the development of the American Society of Cinematographers Color Decision List technology. The ASC CDL unifies color correction principles for use on- and off-set, providing for the faithful reproduction of color values across a variety of color-correction devices. This technology provides basic image-processing mathematics that translate the lift, gamma, and gain settings to a set of common color values to help preserve the cinematographer's intent throughout production.
For making technological contributions that have brought credit to the industry, SMPTE Life Member Peter W. Anderson, ASC received the Gordon E. Sawyer Award, an Oscar statuette.
"Without the art, what would the science be? Without the science, what would the art be?" said Anderson, who was presented his award by Douglas Trumbull. Trumbull has been a keynote speaker at several SMPTE conferences.
Further information about SMPTE is available online at www.smpte.org.